Pages

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Raspberry crumb top cake

Well, I figured we were in much need of another sweet
treat as I came to my attention that my last few posts were a little lacking
that department!

I’d been meaning to tackle a ‘crumb top’ style cake for a
while, and then one day one of my colleagues brought in a version that he’d
made over the weekend. Of course this
contained the usual eggs, milk, butter and refined sugars, but I was curious to
see whether I could come up with an equally yummy healthy alternative. A couple
of days later, upon my request I found his recipe in my inbox, so the challenge
was set!

The original recipe followed a different methodology to
the route I eventually took at this use fresh yeast to create a kind of dough
for the base, although it had the texture of sponge. I figured that my best bet
was to opt for a more standard ‘sponge’ style with the fruit layer and crumb
topping to boot. After doing a little research I settled on this recipe by The Post Punk Kitchen to
give me my starting point.

This cake was pretty yummy. The sponge was light and the
topping crumbly (in my opinion a bit too dry and crumbly to I’d be tempted to
use agave as noted below). Also don’t skimp on the amount of jam/fruit as this
gives the cake moistness and a beautiful layer of textures.

Recipe: raspberry crumb top cake

Makes one 9’ cake pan (round or square)

Ingredients

Cake base:

¾ cup soy milk

1 tsp cider vinegar/white wine
vinegar

¼ cup rapadura plus ¼ tsp
stevia

2 tbs coconut butter

2 tbs apple puree

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 ¼ cups white spelt flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

Topping:

½ cup sugar free raspberry (or other berry) jam

½ - ¾ cup raspberries

1 cup white spelt flour

1/3 cup rapadura (using agave
may be better as will be stickier)

1 tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp nutmeg

1/3 cup coconut butter melted

Method

Mix the soy
milk and vinegar and set aside to curdle in a large bowl. For the topping mix
the dry ingredients then add the coconut butter (and agave if using) and mix
with fingers until the mixture clumps into fairly large lumps that don’t
crumble away immediately. Add extra oil if needed. For the cake base, mix the
remaining wet ingredients with the curdled soy milk. Add the dry ingredients
and mix well until the batter is very smooth. Pour the batter into a greased/lined
cake pan. ‘blob’ the jam onto the top and mix through a little. Break up the
raspberries a bit and evenly cover the top of the batter. Sprinkle the crumb
topping across the cake evenly and press down into the batter a little. Bake
for approx. 30 mins at 180C until a toothpick comes out clean.